Linux help?

[tommag]

First off, I don't do computer stuff, so I know less than nothing.
I have my laptop dual boot with 7pro and linux mint cinnamon. I'm trying to get a brother ads 1500w scanner to run in mint. Wine doesn't work. Brother's download offers old drivers for linux (2014) and I cant install it. Per the instructions, I try creating the symbolic link and get the file not found response.
I'm told that the old drivers probably wont be stable if I do install them.
I'm not finding much for travel scanners that work with linux, but would buy a new one if it worked for me. My goal is to leave ms behind and go to linux. My only real use for this laptop is scanning Bill's of lading into pdf and emailing them.
Any ideas?

[1911sw45]

Have you upgraded to cinnamon mint 19.3? What I found is brother printers and scanner do not work well with it.

[DougGuy]

That's a pretty old scanner right? Might have much better luck with a newer one. JS...

[tommag]

I think 19.3 is what I have. The scanner is around 2 years old.
The only brand that has drivers listed on their website for mint is epson. I might try one of theirs.

[popper]

My printer ans printer scanner are both brother. Go to mint site, look for a link to Linux update site. Run driver updated program and it will download and build the driver. Not at my computer now so can't give specifics.

[roadie]

I think 19.3 is what I have. The scanner is around 2 years old.
The only brand that has drivers listed on their website for mint is epson. I might try one of theirs.



Whatever drivers you install don't have to be specific to Mint......Linux is Linux. The difference is in the packaging, with Mint you're installing a .deb package. I don't use a printer or scanner, so have little knowledge on getting one to work, or where to find drivers. I'm kinda surprised that Mint doesn't have them, it's a huge distro.

It may be that you have to get drivers from Brother because the code is proprietary, so you're kinda stuck there. As far as the symbolic link, the files you're linking to obviously aren't where they're supposed to be, or you've got a typo in the "ln" command. That's where I would be looking.

You can check with a filemanager to make sure the files are going where they're supposed to go. Epson drivers will be no use to you.

[tommag]

Looking at some bug files from a couple years ago, it looks like the problem is that the drivers need to be moved to a new location.
If I manage to muddle my way through this, I might even get to the point that I can spell kompooter.

[tommag]

Roadie, I meant that I might try buying an epson to see if it'll work for me.

[Rapidrob]

I'm in the same boat I have a two year old Brother Laser color printer /scanner and just downloaded MX Linux and the scanner will not even be seen,printer works just fine.
Ubuntu and Linux Lite worked just fine.

[roadie]

Roadie, I meant that I might try buying an epson to see if it'll work for me.



I would do a search on which printers work well with Linux before I laid money down on another.

I'm assuming the Mint forums were of no help to you?

[tommag]

I would do a search on which printers work well with Linux before I laid money down on another.

I'm assuming the Mint forums were of no help to you?
Not so far. A lot to wade through and I don't speak the language.
I just tried the sym link command again and got permission denied.

[roadie]

Not so far. A lot to wade through and I don't speak the language.
I just tried the sym link command again and got permission denied.


You have to be superuser (root).......that's usually the reason for that error message.

In Mint I imagine you use sudo.

[roadie]

Just saw this on a Linux site. Wondering if that's causing the problem with symlinks. The files in the quote might be different, but if they're going to the wrong location it ain't gonna work.



"10. Now you may have to solve a problem with the scanner. In 64-bit Linux Mint 19.x and Ubuntu 18.04 the location for the supporting library files has changed, and the driver for the scanner feature doesn't always take that into account. The Brother driver then puts them in /usr/lib64, whereas your operating system expects them in /usr/lib.

So for a 64-bit system, you now need to execute the following three commands in order to make your scanner work well (use copy/paste to transfer them one by one to the terminal, and press Enter after each command):

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrscandec*.so* /usr/lib

sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/sane

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother*.so* /usr/lib/sane"

[tommag]

Just saw this on a Linux site. Wondering if that's causing the problem with symlinks. The files in the quote might be different, but if they're going to the wrong location it ain't gonna work.



"10. Now you may have to solve a problem with the scanner. In 64-bit Linux Mint 19.x and Ubuntu 18.04 the location for the supporting library files has changed, and the driver for the scanner feature doesn't always take that into account. The Brother driver then puts them in /usr/lib64, whereas your operating system expects them in /usr/lib.

So for a 64-bit system, you now need to execute the following three commands in order to make your scanner work well (use copy/paste to transfer them one by one to the terminal, and press Enter after each command):

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrscandec*.so* /usr/lib

sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/sane

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother*.so* /usr/lib/sane"
Thanks, I saw something like that,but since I'm not sure of myself and am getting tired, I'll try it in the morning.
Popper, I checked for updates and installed them, not sure if that's what you meant.

[GhostHawk]

When it comes to linux google is your friend.

Type in exactly what your problem is and spend some time reading.
A few times it took a few trys, but it always got the job done.

[gwrench]

Sometimes in Linux you have to install a "front end" program to get a gui that makes sense to us mortals. In other words, you may actually have installed the scanner, but you don't know the terminal commands to run it. Skanlite is the front end I use for my canon multi function rig in Mint. It won't hurt to try installing it.

[popper]

scanning using Sane requires a sudu command.
https://support.brother.com/g/s/id/linux/en/instruction_scn1c.html?c=us_ot&lang=en&redirect=on
https://support.brother.com/g/s/id/linux/en/instruction_scn2.html?c=us_ot&lang=en&redirect=on
https://support.brother.com/g/s/id/linux/en/index.html?c=us_ot&lang=en&comple=on&redirect=on

[tommag]

I don't know what happened, but simple scan now works with this scanner. Maybe it required more than one restart? Unfortunatly, I'm only able to scan one page into a file and have to scan multiple docs into a single pdf. Anyway, it's a start.
Thank all of you!

[popper]

Something about numbering each scan file so they don't overwrite.